At two in the morning the most useful thing you own is the number moulded into your tyre, and it is the hardest thing on the car to read. Black lettering on black rubber, at ankle height, in the dark, usually on the face of the wheel turned toward the kerb.
The trick is the angle of the light. Hold a phone torch flat against the sidewall so the beam rakes across the letters instead of shining straight at them, and the raised moulding throws its own shadow. What you are after is one run of characters: the section width in millimetres, the sidewall height as a percentage of that width, a letter, the rim diameter in inches, then the load index and the speed letter.
Those last two get left out of nine calls in ten, and they are the ones which decide what goes on the van before we set off. Give us all of it and the job finishes in one visit. Give us half of it and we arrive carrying a guess, which usually means coming back.
Friday night is our busiest, which tells you something about when tyres fail. We run the weekend as ordinary working time, out around Berrylands and Surbiton town centre through both nights, with on-the-spot repair as well as replacement so a Friday puncture does not cost you the Saturday. Same tools in Tolworth as in Long Ditton, same on every call. Valve in Alexandra Drive, balance in St Marks Hill, pressures before we go.
24-hour tyre callout in Surbiton is part of our wider 24-hour emergency callout cover. For 24-hour tyre callout in Surbiton, call 07717 389637 or get a price for your tyre.
Streets around Surbiton station and up St Marks Hill are parked solid, which puts most sidewalls a few inches from a kerb with the lettering facing away from you. Add darkness and it stops being merely inconvenient. Those same streets are quiet in the small hours, so the reading is often easier done together on arrival than fought with alone on the phone.
A driver who could not make out a single digit had the lot inside a minute once the light was laid along the rubber rather than pointed at it. Read out over the phone, checked back, and the right tyre came off the van.
Where the numbers would not come clear at all, a flash photograph did the job. A camera picks up the shadow line better than an eye does at that hour, and nobody had to kneel in the road any longer than necessary.
Two cars in one street, the same size on the sidewall, different speed ratings. Loading the wrong one would have meant a second trip the following day. The letter got read off properly at half past midnight and the right tyre went on.
A group of digits with a slash in the middle, then a letter and two more digits, then a two digit number and a final letter. That sequence is the width, the profile, the wheel size, the load index and the speed rating.
Try the light at an angle first. Failing that, photograph it with the flash on and read it off the screen, or go to a different wheel, since three of the four are usually identical. If none of that works, tell us the car and the year.
It does. The speed letter and the load index describe what the casing was built to carry and how fast it was built to do it, and both are set by the maker of the car. Going below either is not a saving.
It is useful for the tyre going on rather than the one coming off. Four digits in a small oval give the week and the year it was moulded. You are entitled to see that on anything new we fit.
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